In current pollen identification, the similarity of morphological features of oak pollen under Light Microscopy (LM), the tricolporate and verrucate pollen grains, only allows identification of oak pollen as theQuercus genus. Based on Liu et al.’s (2007) study, the morphological features that distinguish Quercus pollen of different species are less than 200-250 nm in size, the limit of the resolution of conventional light microscopes (LM). Besides, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) can take images with a magnification range of 30X to 800,000X. Image resolutions of 0.6nm (30kV and 3.5nm-1kV) are possible with secondary electron images (UC Berkeley, Electron Microscope Lab). Recent SEM studies of oak pollen morphology focus on describing general morphological characteristics of oak species in certain regions, which don’t include California. The aim of this article is to evaluate the micro-morphological surface features observed under the SEM and morphological features observed under the LM to classification and differentiation between phylogenetic lineages of Quercus native to California.